I know some have been thrown around forever, but what are your favorite combos that may not have occurred to everyone?
I just realized that PW Tempest would be a beast if Wraith gets all three mega computers into play. His primary power allows him to play up to three cards, and take 3 damage from the environment for each. With -3 damage from the environment, he could play his whole hand - better use Reclaim from the Deep to get all those aquatic correspondences back!
PW Tempest also works amazing with Immutus. The environment deals Immutus 9 damage, and he can play 3 cards for free.
Also the Visionary's Mass Levitation. (Maybe. The text is "reduce damage dealt by environment cards by 3." Tempest isn't being dealt damage by an environment card, he's being dealt damage by the environment himself. Does that count?)
I would probably say that wouldn't work, no. Neither would Environmental Allies, unfortunately. Your best bet would be damage reduction, if you wanted a more permanant workaround.
What about Mega Computer? Is it "environment cards," or "the environment?"
There is no card that reduces damage dealt by "The Environment," only Environment cards, and PW Tempest's damage is dealt by the environment, not a card.
The best way to get it for free is Otherwordly, Elemental Subharmonic Inducer (set to Lightning), and a -1 taken from one of your allies (most likely Captain Cosmic or Argent Adept)
Even Ground Pound prevents cards from dealing damage and is no help.
You can't even redirect the damage to Haka through enduring intercession, because that requires a card dealing the damage.
Adept (bulwark), Cosmic (Bracer), Legacy (Interception), Scholar (Alchemical Redirection), Unity (Stealth Bot), Naturalist (Rhino+Indomitable Force), The Sentinels (Mainstay+Human Shield), Setback (Uncharmed Life+tokens), Sky-Scraper (Monolith), Wagner Mars Base (Meteor Storm), Enclave of the Endlings (Bloogo, Immutus) Are the ones that can pull the damage away from you or make you immune to it.
Other than that you need universal reductions to damage like Defensive Displacement (the Block), or reductions in damage you take.
Assuming that you are correct, how would they have worded PW Tempest if they wanted him to interact with Mass Levitation and all the others?
Unless you can come up with a decent alternative wording, I'm inclined to say that they meant for these interactions to be possible, but there was no good way to word the card to make that completely clear (and that we need an offical ruling to know for certain one way or another).
The clarification came from Christopher, because we asked in playtesting about Mass Levitation (because that would be amazing) and he clarified that anything that prevented environment cards from dealing damage would not stop this because it isn't dealt by a card.
They could have used any wording but "The Environment" if they wanted a card to stop it, the whole idea is that it won't be affected by most easy methods.
From what I understand, nothing that mitigates environment card/target damage will work on PW Tempest's power. The damage is not coming from an environment target, nor from an environment card. Mass Levitation doesn't affect it, nor does Mega Computer, nor does Environmental Allies. There's only one situation where that damage is negated/reduced due to anti-environment effects: using Setback's Wrong Place and Time to redirect the damage to Iron Legacy (who is "immune to damage from the environment"). Heck, even the Chairman's backside isn't immune to this damage when Setback redirects it to him (he's only immune to damage from environment cards). Your best bet is to have Captain Cosmic give Energy Bracers to Tempest. Between Tempest's Otherworldly Resiliance, Elemental Subwave Inducer, and up to 3 Energy Bracers (choose 3 of those 5), you can get the damage down to 0.
My favorite combos:
1. America's Greatest Legacy's Lead From the Front + Setback's High Risk Behavior (preferably x2) = complete removal of High Risk Behavior's disadvantage allowing you to go to crazy heights of bonus damage. Throw in Setback's Looking Up and you can get a crazy amount of Unlucky Tokens super fast, and then when the damage gets too high, you use Wrong Time and Place to start turning that token gain into damage (spend the 3 tokens you gain from Looking Up's power to power Wrong Time and Place to redirect the start of turn self-damage from Looking Up). This works particularly well when playing with Grandpa Legacy since he can use his power to make Setback gain three more Unlucky tokens (and another +2 to villain targets!) on Legacy's turn. Besides, Galvanize just makes Setback hit himself harder, costing extra tokens to redirect the damage. With sufficiently lucky draws, this combo gains +5.3 damage to villain targets each turn as well as hitting at least twice (thrice if you forfeit +2 damage) for 3 base damage. So, 5+7 damage the first turn you have the combo, then 11+13 the second turn, then 15+17 the third turn, then 19+21... And that's just with powers from two heroes (once you get the 4-card combo, of course).
2. (This one I found out from playing the video game version - I never thought to do it before!) Absolute Zero + Visionary's Twist the Aether = hilarity.
A lot of AZ's cards make him hit himself for a bunch of fire damage, allowing you to then deal that much cold damage to a foe. If you need healing, you can hit yourself with the cold blast, healing you more than you were hurt, but barely more than that. Twist the Aether changes this wonderfully.
Suddenly, instead of doing 10 fire damage to yourself which you turn into 12 healing causing you to gain 2 HP, you deal 13 cold damage to yourself which gives you 13 HP. Frost-bound Drain: Deal 1 target 4-5 cold damage and heal yourself for 4-6 HP. Hoarfire can become: deal 1 target 4 cold damage, regain 5 HP, regain 4 more HP, lose 1 HP and deal 1 target 3 cold damage (deal 7 damage, heal 8). Or, you can do it as, deal 1 target 4 cold damage, deal yourself 2 fire damage, deal that same target 4 cold damage, regain 4 HP, regain 4 HP (deal 8 damage, heal 6 HP). When you're really hurt, you use Thermal Shockwave to deal 2 targets 3 cold damage each and yourself 2 fire damage, which turns into 4 cold vs one of those targets you already hit. Then, you regain 12 HP, for a net gain of 10 HP and net damage of 10.
Then, use one of the one-shots at the same time as Thermal Shockwave, since it's a power. In that case, you'd heal for closer to 18, poissibly 25 if the cold damage that heals you counts as damage for the purposes of Thermal shockwave. It's absurd and hilarious and a lot of fun!
3. I haven't tried this one yet, but Super Scientific Tachyon + Parse's Updated Intel + Argent Adept's Arcane Cadence. You can sub in Nightmist's Astral Premonition for either Parse or AA, or just use Parse's Gauge if you want it to be a two-hero combo. Basically, don't leave Super Scentific Tachyon's experimentation to luck, leave it to SCIENCE! With the ability to play or discard the bottom two cards of any deck, it's kinda awesome.
4. Very specific, but... Legacy's Heroic Interception (or Ra's imbued flesh combo but that's slower) + Visionary's Brain Burn when fighting The Chairman. Hit him asap with Brain Burn while protected from the self-harm and suddenly, there are no thugs for the underbosses to play. This is preferably done on the first turn. I guess 10 damage isn't all that much, so a first turn Brain Burn is totally awesome even without the damage immunity, but with the damage immunity it becomes just totally ridiculous.
5. Omnitron-X's Singularity + Skyscraper's link cards. The downside to Skyscraper is that her link cards, while really easy to get out, are a bit harder to get into her trash. Having them in her trash isn't a big deal because she can get them back super fast with her Tiny base power. Omnitron-X's Singularity is powered by any number of equipment cards, with no requirement that they be Omni's. This seems like a great combo I have not yet tried. They really seem like a powerful combo, since Omni can really benefit from Sky's micro-assembler.
That first combo with Legs and Setback is insane...I know what I need to try out in my next game now
Don't forget that you can hit AZ with fire, redirect to cold to AZ (but turn it into fire) to build up Coolant Blast and get strong boosts from any +damage cards out there. Works great in a pinch if you need to hit a target hard and don't have another way to do a ton of damage fast.
Setback. 'nuff said.
Alright, official verdict it is.
As for combos…
Did we ever fix the Friendly Fire + Jack Handle combo? Fixer deals damage to a target, Setback takes some damage, but Jack Handle turns the damage that would dealt to Setback into damage dealt to non-hero targets, which Setback can then use to take more damage… There was some discussion about fixing this because 2 card infinite combos make the game boring, but I can't remember if it actually happened.
Also, I don't think anyone's mentioned Bee Bot + End of Days yet. Use End of Days to destroy all unfriendly cards, then hit Bee Bot to kill End of Days before it destroys any hero cards.
Dynamic Syphon + Cleansing Downpour: Whenever the Syphon takes damage, everybody heals 2 (including the Syphon).
Hippocratic Oath + Proverbs and Axioms: 3 Healing to two different hero targets? Why thank you! (Also, the Sentinels + Proverbs and Axioms is just kind of crazy in general, because you could potentially get 4 power uses out of it. And I don't think you need to use the power of the Sentinel who took damage)
Jack Handle doesn't ever target Setback with damage. As soon as it even tries, it turns into "all non-hero targets". It can't be effected by Friendly Fire at all
Twist the Ether is also Wicked on Fanatic.
The easiest is Fanatic with Embolden and Absolution.
2+2+4 at the cost of 1 damage each round.
My 2 favorite combos:
1. Twist the Ether + Wrest the Mind on Cryo Bot.
Hit Cryo for 1 damage, then redirect the last hit of his attack to Cryo Bot, which will trigger his attack again, interrupting WtM's Damage to it. Repeat till it is at 1hp then let WtM destroy it.
Works awesomely with +1 to Cryo Bot's damage, since you can hit every non-hero target save 1 6 times for 3 damage (increasing 2 to 3 for all but the redirected shot to Cryo, which you reduce to 1).
Best I've pulled off with it was with Legacy giving it +2 and an epic turn by Adept gave Cryo -1 taken, with WtM and TtE getting played.
Ennead hit Cryo for 2-1 damage, and Cryo hit them all for 24 damage, leaving an environment target unharmed.
2. Skyscraper+Mr. Fixer.
Micro Assembler lets fixer hunt for Jack Handle, Jackhandle turns Compulsion Canister into an incredible weapon, all non-hero targets hit for 2 irreducible twice, esp. with Riveting crane on Fixer. Micro also let's you use your power to put Grease Gun in play. Then Salvage Yard let's Skyscraper recover all her links, Monolith protects Fixer in Bloody Knuckles, the two of them are just insane together.
If you have Jackhandle on Fixer you can even put Cortex Hyperstimulator on him, -1 to your first instance of damage in exchange for dealing everything lightning damage.
Was that an official verdict? Because I found the thread, which doesn't seem to come to any definite conclusion.
Also, Micro-Assembler + Turret Mode. You weren't completely set up yet? Go into Turrent Mode anyways, and finish your setup using the Micro-Assembler's power. You don't even need the equiptment to be in your hand!
So, does the stacked damage from WtM still resolve after Cryo-bot dies? As in, when doing this combo, does Visionary take 30+ damage at the end, or does the destruction of Cryo-bot trigger the destruction of WtM before any damage hits Visionary? I think at least one instance of the 3 damage from WtM would hit Visionary, since it has already been target-locked on her (the instance that came with the one that took out Cryo Bot), but the rest would fizzle without WtM being in play.
Ok so then Dual Crowbars is fair game? (not infinite but can give a pretty awesome amount of damage especially if silver lining is in play)
That would lead to an infinite loop; it CAN be affected by Friendly Fire. It won't build up tokens, but it will cause him to swing an infinite number of times.
I basically wrote this version of Friendly Fire, (not that it matters, I just like bringing it up. I'm proud that something I did is in the game!) and the way I would fix it is to just have Setback be the source of the damage. When Fixer hits someone, Setback hits himself for 2. I mean, it's his fault he's getting hit anyway, since he's basically walking into the attack, so it fits thematically, more or less. Plus it fixes the Jack Handle shenanigans.
I'm pretty sure, yes. Anytime you see a situation that ends in an infinite loop, chances are you are playing it wrong.
With Jack Handle in play, Fixer doesn't have the option to deal Setback the damage because he can't